Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It really helps us get this work done.
As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
com.
So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
I've got Emma Hutchinson and Jay Hare from Horseback UK based
up in the wilds of Aberdeen.
They kind of do everything started with the military, still working with the
military, but then transitioned also into kids at risk youth all sorts of
programs and populations over the years.
And I would say that in terms of mentorship for people that are looking,
particularly within the UK to get involved in the equine assisted field,
horseback UK are really people to look to because unlike many programs who
target very much one population set or one type of therapeutic outcome,
horseback UK are unusually eclectic.
And yet they integrate the whole thing in a really interesting way.
And of course they do this from a rather wonderful fairytale location up
there in Fairytale Land, which is Aber.
Extremely beautiful.
So, can you guys introduce yourselves?
Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Do you wanna kick off Jay?
Jay Hare: My name's Jay Ha.
Jason calls me Jay.
I'm the course director for Horseback uk.
Next month I'll have been at the charity for 15 years after being seconded here
by the Marine Commandos, back when I went through my rehabilitation and was healing
after injuries sustained in combat.
Rupert Isaacson: And what do you do now?
You say you are the, you are, you are directing, but what does that mean?
Jay Hare: So, yeah, it's kind of a pop title, really is it course director.
But I think what it entails is actually helping and to design the programs and
the qualifications that we deliver here as well as in part delivering them and
also working with our mentors so that we give a good product, a good program,
a good outcome to whether it be our youngsters, our military, our community
courses, or whoever it might be.
Some just kind of tweaking that constantly and making sure it's all running well.
Like any good business, charity organization, it should look
like a swan skimming across the top of that lock or lake.
But underneath there's always legs kicking, so we're making sure that each
one's working the way it should be.
Cool.
All right, Emma, tell us about you.
Emma Hutchison: So I'm Emma Hut.
The charity.
Charity.
So I I run the equine side of it, but I also do the strategic and the, the
sort of the fundraising and the, the desk is just piled high with paperwork,
with all sorts of stuff that you have to have done to, to run a charity.
But fundamentally, as I say, my passion has always been the horses.
And I am still fascinated.
We just started running the, the programs again this year.
We have a couple of months where we kind of try to get on top of
all the paperwork and everything.
And the last few weeks we've gone back to running the courses.
The horses have had a few months off, and they just amazed me about how it took
them a couple of days to get back into it, but how they just slot back into it.
They know their jobs and they're just funny old things that, you know, some
of them, like some people and some of them don't like other people, and they
know what they want and they know how to do their jobs, and it's just, just
me that they're, they're just amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
So Jay I want to start with you.
I remember when I was visiting you guys and we were doing various exercises
together in the arena, it took me a while to realize that you had a prosthetic
leg, you were moving on it so naturally.
So, athletically.
And then at a certain point I say, oh, hold on a second.
He's, he's on a prosthetic leg in a sand arena, kind of jumping over poles and.
Blocks and things.
Emma Hutchison: Is that when he took it off?
Rupert Isaacson: I think he did take it off that.
So no, I think he took it off so he could beat me over the head with it.
But the injuries that you sustained you, you were a marine commando.
Tell us about the, your life prior to that, your life during the process of
being injured, if you like, your recovery.
How did horses come into this?
Why and why did it make you feel that you wanted to do this as a
calling, as a, as a vocation really.
Jay Hare: So yeah.
Okay.
Very quickly, I suppose.
I was born in, born in Greece.
We came over to Wales and I was brought up there.
I spent a lot of time in North Wales and there has always been a
horsemanship connection in my family.
Normally with my grandfathers.
So I agree with some people.
They say sometimes it can skip a generation.
So maybe it hit me.
I had an interest, whether I was trying to, you know, pat one in a
field or something, or, or asking can I ride one, can I ride one?
So I did at an early age, go for very basic riding lessons and going on to, you
know, trek centers and things like that.
And then I forgot about it, completely went to college, studied engineering.
Always wanted to join the senior service, the Royal Navy.
And one day I went to a careers fair and met this six foot four
big bloke with a Green Beret.
And I said, who are you guys?
And I said, well, we're part of the Royal Navy, but with a, with the
elite soldiers of the Royal Navy, with the Royal Marines commandos.
So I dug a little further, you know, asked some questions and I
thought, yeah, that's, that's me.
I'm out playing rugby.
I'm getting dragged down by the gamekeeper.
I'm probably in a bit too much trouble at that early tentative age.
And I thought, yeah, as soon as I finish and I'm, I'm gonna go
off and join the Royal Marines.
And I did, at 19 years of age, I joined at the 11th of September, 2000, passed
out an original, there's a high attrition rate in what's called the highest and
hardest basically basic infant in the.
So about 40 of us started 11 of us, seven to 11 of us trying to
remember the numbers passed out.
Original.
That's without injury, that's without being back to or sent back at class.
And I headed up to Scotland to four five Commander conducting
some, you know, guard duties.
And basically went back from guard, gee, one evening to see
planes flying into buildings.
I said to the guys in the room, I said, what, what film we watching?
They said, no, Jay, this happening real time.
This is a terrorist attack.
And from there, that changed the whole landscape of, of combat for us.
We were the original troops asked to go out to head into the hills.
That's our specialization in four, five Commander to go into
the mountains and arctic regions.
So we requested and off we headed.
Subsequently I did three tours.
I was injured twice.
Once by a suicide bomber on my second tour.
And I got fit, healed, recovered, led a team again on my third tour,
and unfortunately stepped on an improvised explosive device that
blew my last leg off below knee.
So it was an amputee in the armed forces that's called a scratch.
'Cause it's not through knee or above knee.
So that's maybe why I can maneuver a little better than the average
person's, you know, higher amputation.
I lost digits to my right, lost right arm, right leg.
But I.
Onto the radio to call some things in.
And I, I lost my facial identity.
My face was blown off and a degloved.
So over the next few years, that was the 5th of November of all dates to
play around with fireworks and bombs.
It had absolute to be the 5th of November.
It took me about six years to get my you know, the surgery.
I had about 11, at least 11 surgeries to rebuild my face from using bits
of my forehead, rib cartilage from my ears and all sorts of stuff.
So, yeah that took some time.
And in that time I needed something to occupy myself.
I was a young guy, you know, you're 27, 28 years of age, you've
got a family, young family, but you've still got that adrenaline.
You've still got those ghosts from being on previous tours and
you're worried about your future.
But mostly you're trying to sort your head out whilst you're trying to sort
your body out and necess, you can't necessarily do that at the same time.
So there is a time for each of those.
I found out about Horseback uk.
I found there was a, a former Royal Marines officer and his wife, who was
a police officer working with horses up in the Highlands of Scotland.
They approached the commando unit and said, well, maybe the
guys wanna try some horsemanship.
At end of the, the horses got four legs and I've got one.
I thought, well, that, that makes sense.
There's a bit of, you know, mobility with dignity and it's Western, so
it's that kind of iconic cowboy imagery that it conjures up.
And I thought, yeah, let's go, let's go take a look.
And as soon as I got here, it was under my skin.
I loved being around the horses.
I loved especially riding the horses, but I found that there
was more of a relationship working with the horses on the ground, that
they were kind of flight animals.
They wanted to run away very much like I did.
I needed to find my herd, horses needed to be in a herd.
So eventually I came back to mine and that's me.
Yeah.
15 years now.
So I've never left.
They can't get rid of me.
Rupert Isaacson: It, well, one of the things which I was really struck
by when I was up with you all was it really did feel like a family.
And obviously, you know, Emma, it is a family.
I mean, it's you, your husband, your daughters are involved.
They're great horse women as well.
So like anything that's led from a family from the inside this sort of
brings a lot of love and functionality and multi role, you know, cross
fertilization into the thing, but.
Sometimes things that are very family run like that, it can feel that
one's a little bit on the outside, you know, from that core group.
And it was very, very noticeable.
I think Jay, from what you're saying now, yeah.
It makes a lot of sense that there's this, it was, it was like sort of yeah.
Clan headquarters and you're sort of part of the clan and part of the family.
And I, I could see how your horses as well responded in this way.
That the whole, the, the, the, the horse herd and the human herd
were unusually well integrated.
And I was thinking, you know, why is this, is this partly because
they're not less like a riding school where they all go off, you
know, back to their suburban lives.
Oh, this is sort of up in Scotland.
Everyone's living there, sort of to some degree in this slightly wilder place.
Is it, is it that, is it, you know, whatever it is,
there's a special magic here.
So Jay, talk to us about this healing process of trying to find
your identity to lose your face.
That's huge.
And I think that's something which very, we, we can try to imagine
it, but we can't imagine it.
Talk to us about that process of that loss of identity and how that's
informed the work that you do.
Jay Hare: So the, yeah.
There.
So you, you kind of, you're a marine commando.
One minute.
You think you're the steely eye dealer of death that, you know, heads out and
does the nitty gritty stuff that used to seeing war films and reading comic books.
You look like your father.
You think yourself rather handsome in your uniform.
And the next thing you have gotta stick on those a false eye.
And you can't quite smile properly because you know the
scarring and things like that.
You don't wanna look at yourself in the mirror 'cause it reminds you every day.
You kind of look into your partner and your wife and stuff and going,
oh my God, this is not the person that you walk down the aisle with.
You are walking down the street and you're worried that your nose is gonna fall off
at any moment, different times of year.
I was born in Greece, so I can really easily, so I'd have to change from
my winter nose to my summer nose, and then from my summer nose to
my winter nose, you had to super glue it on when it was hot weather.
I used to make a joke that I'd go for lunch with some pals and you know, if I
sneezed my eye would go into your salad.
My nose would go into your pint.
My leg had fall off.
So the lad and the lads nicknamed me Mr.
Potato at one point, which so with that, you know, working with
horses, they don't judge you.
They judge how you are with them in that moment.
They don't care about looks, they don't care about degrees, they
don't care about the car that you drove up in, on the motorbike.
You just hopped off, whatever it might be.
They want to be with you in the moment.
And that gave me that time to, to assess what I was gonna do and think about my
own behaviors and who I was becoming and who I wanted to become and who I had been.
So yeah, it could be a little bit forward, a little bit ambitious,
a little bit strong, a little bit too full on that doesn't work with
the horse, but I can't be passive.
I can't let them walk all over me because then they'll try and take charge.
So again, it's trying to find that balance and that for me is what I found.
Yeah.
Riding, looking like a cowboy, heading out to the states and all the stuff that
I did after all spec, archery, fantastic.
But it was actually finding out who I was and where I kind
of fit in into this third.
And I.
That fascinated me.
So the more I read, the more books I looked at, and Emma was constantly feeding
me, read this, read that Jo, same word.
Have you seen this YouTube documentary?
Have you seen this?
Have you seen that?
And I started to think, yeah, there is.
I believe in what Winston Church said.
There is something about the outside of a horse that's good, the inside
of a man or a woman, obviously.
But you know, Winston Churchill, right or wrong or whatever politics, I felt of
him as a very strong leader, a powerful man that suffered with the black dog.
When that darkness comes, when you suffer some of the kind of traumas
that have been through your life and you try and comprehend what's
happening, working with a horse enabled me to do that and not clock watch.
It wasn't being with a counselor that say, right, you've got an hour with us
off you go, tell me how you're feeling.
Can you watch a war film?
Can you listen to music, watch your love life?
Like, no, I don't.
I wasn't interested
in
Jay Hare: that, any of that.
I just wanted to work with the horse on the ground and
find out what made them tick.
How you could train with them, how you could communicate with them.
And people used to say, you know, do you go and see a a, do you go and
see a, a therapist or a counselor?
And I said, yeah, I do.
And I'll tell you how meant to pay them.
And they, oh, it
thousands.
And that me started that, that beautiful journey, that on
which is helping.
Rupert Isaacson: When you are, when you're dealing with that loss of identity it's
obviously gonna give you a lot of empathy.
And I presume that a lot of the people that come to you as clients must
be wrestling with similar dilemmas.
Are you working with populations that have also been physically maimed in that way?
And then also when you're dealing with say, youth at risk youth or troubled
youth who are going through identity crises in a different way, but of
course have not yet seen the face of suffering in the way that you have.
How do you walk that line between
thinking, you know, you, you don't know what suffering is, you don't
know what loss of identity is?
I do.
And also, yeah, but at the same time, everyone experiences it in their way and
just because they haven't experienced it in the way that you have, which is so raw
and so extreme, doesn't mean of course, that the way in which they're experiencing
is not driving them towards maybe some negative outcomes in their life.
Talk to me about how you walk that dance and with helping others
there, because what you've gone through, you, you, you, you could.
Be forgiven for almost going down a bit of a bitter path and saying, well, you
guys, no one can understand, you know, the extent of what I've gone through.
And, and you'd be absolutely right.
People couldn't, and at the same time, you can use this as an empathetic tool.
Talk to me about that and talk to me about how the horses have helped you to make
it a tool rather than a, a hindrance.
Jay Hare: I think working with our military veterans, if we go into those
first and I'll talk about the youngsters, is it's a lot easier for me because if
I wear shorts or you take a look at me, you sort of go, right, he's either been
in a bad accident and then you find out it's military and you go, oh, right.
That must been time and service.
So it's like, okay, that's fine.
Yeah.
We get it.
Right.
There's a respect that comes with it.
Respect that comes to that, because you can see Yeah.
This guy as a battle, et cetera.
Yes.
I totally empathize with guys and girls that don't have the
scars because they're internal.
Mm-hmm.
So as much as you have to deal with your physical trauma, along comes the
mental trauma to try and adjust to life.
Try not to be bitter.
The outward looking,
I the.
Think is such thing as can't, don't tell me I can't jump over
those horse hurdles with you.
I will do it.
I might have to take a break, take leg off, readjust to run back again,
but I'm still gonna do it with you.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Jay Hare: That's maybe the way I was brought up with a military
kind of family and grounding.
Definitely for the training I received, but also the way I like to lead my life.
I like to remind our military community of who they are through the horses
because they're resilient creatures.
They don't
Jay Hare: sit and feel sorry for themselves.
And then with the youngsters is, is adding those layers and saying,
yeah, this might have happened to me.
I'll tell you why.
It's okay to ask a question point and gossip in the corner.
If you wanna know, I will be open and honest with you as I possibly can.
Don't ask me about the question of how many times I've I pulled the trigger
and how many, all that sort of stuff.
Those are questions you don't ask a serviceman, but if you wanna know what
pain I went through, how I dealt with it, what I felt about myself, I'll explain
it because we can talk about this.
I hope it never happens to you in your life, but life is life.
So things might have happened to you in the past, the way you've been
brought up, the way you've been.
Let's try and build more layers to that onion to build a little bit of
arm, a little bit of strength to you, some inner strength whilst keeping
that empathy and being able to still love life and love other people.
And through the horses you can do that with the youngster.
They can start to show empathy towards another creature, another being.
Then you are winning and that assists the school and that assists the
counselors and that assists their growth.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I should imagine too that because you do carry the scars
of battle, it is got to help people who are much younger than that looking out at
their lives with some perspective to say, okay, wow, I see that this can happen.
Okay, this has happened to this guy and yet he seems he's
here in a position to help me.
This must give quite a gift, I would think, to some of those
kids who are already facing a certain amount of hopelessness.
Even if it's only perceived hopelessness to them, it feels real.
Do they ever say that to you?
Do they say Yeah.
You know, being with you, looking at you sit hearing about your experiences?
This puts my world into perspective.
What sort of feedback do you get?
Jay Hare: I start off with, with getting a lot more girls through
than we do boys at the moment, but it's always, I've got this problem.
I've been pigeonholed with this, but they wouldn't say that.
So they'll say things like, I've got a adhd, medicated, and I'm told
I'm useless and I can't do anything and I'll never become anything.
And I go, really?
You've got a super power.
You have got this ability to think a hundred miles an hour of a hundred
different problems and solutions and come up with them whilst people are still
just getting out the seats to put the jacket on and go deal with one of them.
Now we can sit here all day and talk about the issues and the problems,
or we can go and find that light bulb moment for you because I've got
a DHD, so is this team member, so that team member, in fact they've
got a bit of this and a bit of that.
So let's go and be those adventures.
Let's go and find what it is that really makes us tick.
And we can do that through the, through working with the horses on the ground and
then up to the level of where they'll be able to sit on them, if that's depending
on the course and what we're doing.
Does my experiences make a difference?
Yeah, possibly because it's visual.
Mm-hmm.
Jay Hare: It's that ability to say to a youngster, yeah, this happens,
but it, it doesn't define you.
It can just make you stronger.
And I.
Probably isn't, might be midweek, it might be into the
second phase of the second week.
It might be into the 12th of development program takes go, you know what
I've wanted ask you this question.
Or it could be 3, 4, 5 years later, whether had this where I youngster, he
served coffee at all places, take up range with my, and this tall came up to me.
He wasn't tall when I first him, he of the group and he said said, how you doing?
See you?
And it was on the tip of my tongue.
I was yeah, I knew I'd worked with him.
I remembered which group, but I couldn't remember his name.
And I was, yeah mate, I'm doing well.
I'm doing well.
Whatcha up to, oh well I'm working here.
And he got called away after dropping off the coffees and
you know,
Jay Hare: cakes and stuff.
And I went back and I said, Liam, how you doing?
Good to see you.
How you doing buddy?
And he says, I'm doing well.
I've got this job.
I've got another job and I'm working jobs at the weekend.
I'm gonna study psychology in Edinburgh, but I'm gonna take a year out and I'm
gonna go and travel around South America.
I went, oh my goodness.
You were what was described to me as a youngster who was disengaged from.
I was called something, it was a lot rude.
When I was in school, I was called, but I shook it down.
I gave a, I said, I'm so proud of you.
Absolutely brilliant.
That's, that's, that's a success story.
That's amazing.
And he said, I want to study psychology.
'cause I wanna be able to help people like uj.
I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a counselor.
I'm just someone trying to do something good and have found horses
is the great way of doing that.
But I inspired a youngster to go into that world and yeah, I'll
tell you what, I'll be honest.
Yeah.
Someone peeling onions there and it got a bit as I left.
And I,
and I hear a lot of success stories.
You're not gonna hit on point every time.
Some you just can't help.
And some go along a different track.
They take a different route.
But when I hear stories like that, I know I'm doing something right.
I know that we are doing something right and I know that horses are
working because it just gives people that ability to think outside the box.
When you're doing equine assisted services,
Rupert Isaacson: when you say to them let's go on an adventure.
Talk us through what some of those adventures look like.
And you also said that some of the work can be mounted, which I love because as
you know, with Horse Boy Method, we do a lot of mounted work, but within the equine
assisted world, it's often not mounted.
So I'm intrigued by that.
Talk us through what these adventures might be and what
Yeah, just talk us through it.
Jay Hare: So some of the basic ones are actually being out in the fresh air.
Realizing your outdoors, looking at nature, starting to look at the world
around you and being aware of it, being able to touch it, feel it, get amongst it.
Be within it alongside the horse.
And noticing subtle little things like behaviors, like, eye contact, that
pressure that can come from eye contact.
That that ability to communicate without speaking.
You know, how do we do that?
How do we pick up on the energy of each other?
I had a we're running a course at the moment.
As a young girl, she gets quite angry about things that
she gets confused with stuff.
And today I said to her, look, I can feel the anger coming off you.
I can feel your frustration.
What's going on?
And she told me, and I said, do you feel that with a horse when you get frustrated
because a horse can pick that up from you?
I didn't realize I gave that off.
And I said to some people, you do, you give that off.
It's not forging her arms and sulking.
It's just this energy you give off and the horse pick up on that.
So that starts with that kind of a little adventure, but talking about ourselves,
which, which one of the horses are we, Ann is really good at pairing you up with.
Personality to, I don't know, what would you call it?
Your ality?
Mm.
It needs to be opposite or are they the same?
Sometimes they can be opposite in their characters.
And on the spectrum of, of who they are.
But then also we've seen horses that just join with someone who's maybe
on the autistic spectrum and it, the horse just goes to them and all
of a sudden they're partnered up.
And we've seen that twice this week of horses we didn't think would wanna
work anywhere near some of these kids.
And they were like, no, we love them.
This is who we want.
We love them.
So that's an adventure.
Yes.
They can take them out with the horses.
We can go and do bushcraft.
We can ride out, we can do camp outs and things.
Just something, it's almost like you said to us, Rupert, that you follow
the kid and go with them and take the horse because that's the kind of conduit
that's the bridge a lot of times.
So we have lesson plans, we have learning outcomes, objectives,
qualifications, all that sort of stuff.
But sometimes, and we've had it this week and we had it today, do you know what
change to what we were gonna do Today is gonna happen tomorrow or it's gonna
happen Friday today we are doing this.
We're changing it.
We tell them, we explain that to them, you see a sigh of relief and they go, yeah,
that's exactly what we wanna do today.
Again, you're picking up on that energy from the youngster and you're picking
up that energy from the horse and you're mixing it together and going,
right, let's get the best outcome.
So whatever adventure it is, use your imagination.
Go out there, have fun, try different things.
And that's exactly the conversation we had when you came up to visitors
and I went, yeah, I get this guy.
I totally understand it.
That's the way I'm,
Rupert Isaacson: you know, when people think of Bitcoin assisted world, I
think they often think about people working in arenas in a very, kind
of fairly controlled sort of a way.
You're out there, you've also, you've got a lovely indoor arena.
You've got lovely round pen and outside arenas too, but you also have the forest
and the open hill and you know, not every, not every equine assisted place
of course, has that kind of access.
But there are some I've seen that do that don't quite use it.
And I'm always like, oh man.
But that's kind of where the magic is.
It's, it's out there in nature.
You, you mentioned going out and even camping out with horses.
Paint a picture for us about how that can look.
What, how, how might you organize that?
What kind of people might you take on that and, and how might that play out?
Jay Hare: So we've changed various different programs and.
We have one that is a personal development three phase program.
So each phase being a week long, it's residential.
And that culminates in a final exercise where we take the horses out into,
you know, the Highlands of Scotland.
We used to ride them out and then we camp out.
We had the horses out.
Depending on the time of year, you can have problems with kind of,
you know,
You know,
Jay Hare: Mid high and, and all sorts of stuff.
So we've gotta be careful with that.
Or we can bring the horses back in Yeah.
From that and leave our guys out on the ground.
So now I think looking at the kind of wellbeing courses that we're doing
is actually walking out to get the horse, spending time out in the field
looking at herd behavior, which talk to you about, she takes that part.
Yeah.
And understanding who we are, where we sit in the herd, what type of horse
do we, what type of personality have we got at all times being outdoors.
And the more outdoors we can be, the better.
So sometimes it might be as simple as just standing outside and just,
you know, doing some breath work, maybe alongside the horses, trying
to mirror the horses, inhale and exhale with ourselves, trying to work
out our heartbeat the same as them.
Those are the kind of.
Out a little bit more on other programs, we can make them more complex.
And we, as I say, we are lucky here.
We we're in the Highlands of Scotland.
We suffer some heavy winters.
We're just coming out kind of one now.
I'd say that was too heavy.
But the springs here, we're starting to get that energy.
The horses are getting lively again.
Yes.
Let's, let's start having some adventures again.
What that looks like depends on the group,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
You mentioned Bush bushcraft.
Of course.
That's dear to my heart.
You know, having lived with hunters and gatherers, and I, I know very much the
healing power of touching, sleeping, being, working with nature in that
intimate way that our DNA wants, because that's who we are, we're organisms.
Again, this isn't something that's often integrated into equine assisted
stuff, so I'm intrigued about talk, talk to me about the bushcraft that
you do and, and some of the changes that you see with people with that.
Jay Hare: The bushcraft is,
again, getting us outdoors.
It's something that we brought into the course you know, many,
many moons ago, various experts, professionals coming into help with,
with training and things like that.
It, it keeps you, if you, if you've got a deficit.
For instance, it is a fantastic way of doing so many different lessons and moving
around in that, that classroom because it is a classroom and if it's underneath
an old drops parachute with a fire going and you dunno, you're talking about
how to build shelters or you're talking about plan N in your survival situation.
Or if you're simply ma making string the bows and arrows out of nettles to
you know, different forms of making a fight, you can switch and you can
pick up on the energy of that group.
Go, okay, we're losing a bit here, let's put that to the side and
let's move on to something else.
Or maybe that particular group is into that particular lesson.
Okay, I can take the group and I can split the group and mix it up a little bit.
So there's so many dynamics to do in bushcraft, but it's, it's earthy,
it's salty, it's getting your hands dirty, it's being in nature.
It's noticing things.
It's learning things.
It's not a classroom environment yet.
It's the best classroom to be in.
Rupert Isaacson: What, what sort of changes have you seen?
Everyone's got, you know, their stories.
What stories spring to mind for you of transformations
you've seen using bushcraft?
Jay Hare: I think kind of attention to detail.
When they start to notice things and they start to learn a little
bit how they then, how they then become the teacher to the others.
And that is fascinating because, you know, they're learning when they're
starting to teach what they've learned to other people, right.
Which ingrained in that, in that that kind of psyche with them.
So, yeah.
I, I love it when a teacher or staff member comes up and they've
been trying for ages to talk about biology and photosynthesis and, you
know, whatever it might be, how a tree grows and things and how roots
work and how fungi works, et cetera.
And the biology teacher comes up that they've not maybe jelled with
and they've had a bit of abrasion, they've rubbed up against each other.
All of a sudden the youngsters sitting there going, and this is how this works.
This is how that is.
And this is called a so and so, and this is a tree and
this oak tree and this is this.
And the teacher's just kind of, okay, that's amazing because few weeks
ago I was trying to get this to you.
Now I've got somewhere to go.
Now I can pass on that little bit of knowledge because we've got a commonality,
we've got an interest together.
And that has repaired so many relationships with working with
these schools and organizations.
I think that's, that's just golden.
That's ace.
Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
I mean, it's, it's, I know this is what you do every day, but it's
cutting edge work and it's so much more rich and layered than simply
going into an arena with a horse.
Not that that's not a wonderful thing to do, but you guys take it to
a level that I am unused to seeing.
And it's, it's, it's extremely impressive.
Jay.
Alright, I want to ask Emma some questions now, Emma.
How, why did you start this whole thing in the first place?
Like, you must be mad.
Why, why would you, why, why would anybody start an equine thing, let
alone in Northern Scotland where the weather is brutal and, sorry mate.
Are you alright, ed?
Yeah.
So Jay has to leave right now, listeners, so if you've got any other questions for
him, just email us and we'll we'll pass them on and we'll get answers from you.
Jay, thank you so much.
It was an honor.
All right.
Cheers, ma'am.
Okay,
Emma Hutchison: so the whole thing started.
We moved to the property that we're at now 16 years ago.
And the idea was, is that we would be here and we were going to breed port
horses and we were gonna take people out in Western to the beautiful side hills.
And that was the idea.
And then we'd been here for, so.
And moved here in the November, in the December we had some friends come
around and quite a few of them had come back from Afghanistan at the time,
and they were, they were not in a good place either physically or mentally.
And we sat around a big bonfire.
And then during the days, we, at the time we had I had a horse, jock had a horse,
and the, the girls had a couple of ponies.
And these guys, we just interacted with the horses.
We were just outside and one of the guys said, this is what we need to do.
This is how guys need to decompress after they've been to war.
This has been a real kind of breath of fresh air for me, and this is
what I, fresh, I absolutely needed.
So that was really the start of it.
And of course we thought, you know, I'm quite enthusiastic about things,
stocks extremely enthusiastic about most things, and we just said, right,
well, we're gonna do something.
And it was 2008 it was the height of Afghanistan and it was when we were, we
were all watching the news and seeing the coffins come back and it, you know,
it was, it was a pretty horrific time.
So Jock approached four five Commando, which is in our growth, just over the
hill, about an hour and a half away, and went to the CO there and said, look, you
know, we've got this property, we've got some horses, we've got a bit of a rundown.
The who have been injured.
The co sent their injured troop.
So there was a
Rupert Isaacson: co being commanding officer for those
who are not British, right?
Yeah.
Or,
Emma Hutchison: Sent their injured troop, which was called Harden Troop.
And there must have been probably about 20 guys came up for the day
of, which Jay was one of them.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Emma Hutchison: And these guys all had, they were all young.
They all had life-changing injuries.
So you're talking, so Jay had one leg, we had a triple amputee.
We had, you know, an 18-year-old.
It, it was, it was life-changing for us to see it, to actually
to to be there and hands-on with these guys and hear the stories.
It was we both felt that we had to do something.
We didn't know what it was that we wanted to do or what we could do.
But we, we knew that we wanted to do something.
So we are in Aberdeenship.
We have Aberdeen City about 30 miles away.
Obviously Aberdeen is the oil place of the, the uk.
And so we went and approached some of the oil companies and said,
look, you know, would you like to be involved in this project?
And they, of course, they said, well, what project?
You don't have a project.
So, we had to then go through the process of saying, well, what is it?
And it just evolved from that really.
And as I say, then Jay came up with several of the other
guys and it has just evolved.
And we got more horses and we got more people, and then more people got involved.
And once you get onto that rollercoaster, there was no getting off really.
And the, the, I mean, my children at the time were three,
five and seven or something.
So they were involved right from the start.
We had no facilities outside.
So the kitchen was our kitchen.
The toilet was our toilet.
The fridge was our fridge.
The, the kids' lunch and dinner frequently went missing because it
was eaten by the course attendees.
And so it was, it was quite challenging to start with, but we eventually
managed to get some traction.
Some people heard about what we were doing.
The British military at the time crawled all over us because we were looking
after their injured, still serving guys.
So we had to every risk assessment, everything was just,
you know, how are you doing this?
How are you looking after them?
You better make sure that you are not damaging them further.
And there had been some incidents in other places where people had
been on horses and fallen off and, you know, been more damaged.
So, yeah, everything was.
Massively sort of overkill to, to make sure that we protected these guys.
And so we were one of the only places where serving guys, serving
injured guys were being sent
Rupert Isaacson: forward.
Well, that, that was gonna be my question when you said that Jay and the others who
came up, you know, had these life-changing injuries, and I assumed clearly wrongly
that when you had injuries like that, you would be automatically discharged.
Yet you said they were still serving.
So what capacities were they serving in and was the idea that they would then stay
in the military or transition out of it?
What, talk us through, because I'm, I'm not familiar with that.
With that sort of infrastructure at all, I, I, I've worked, we work with
a lot of veterans, obviously, in our organization, but by the time we meet
them, they're veterans or we meet with people who are still serving,
like we work with the German army but they're not necessarily injured.
And so they're sort of in between deployments.
So that seems to me a really interesting gray area.
If someone has a life-changing industry in injury, but is still
serving, how, how does that look?
Where, where would you guys fit in with that, with your service?
If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're considering
a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
developed in conjunction with Dr.
Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
We work in the saddle with younger children.
Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
It works incredibly well.
It's now in about 40 countries.
Check it out.
If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
applied in schools, in homes.
If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
at home that will create neuroplasticity.
when they're not with you.
Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
need, as well as Serving my clients.
Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
absolutely gives you this.
Emma Hutchison: So, at the time, so again.
These guys, it was unknown.
Nobody really knew what was happening.
All they knew that they were sending more guys out and more guys were coming
back with these horrific injuries.
So at the time, Jay was told, don't worry, we'll look after you.
You'll always have a job.
Don't worry about it.
Because of course they didn't wanna pile any further stress.
They've all had these, they all, a lot of these guys thought
they were Korea military guys.
They were going to be in the military for their career.
And suddenly this career has been cut short.
They didn't know what, what they were gonna do.
How are they going to finance their, their families and all this sort of stuff.
So, the, the military said, don't worry.
We will, we will keep you in.
The reality of that was two or two or three leaders down the
line, that's not gonna happen.
So they were told, well, you, you do have to transition out.
There were various sort of funds available, transition funds to help
guys, but ultimately the ones that who were, were no longer physically able to
do their job, had to leave the military.
So it was a big change because I say I, I think a lot of these
guys were left very angry.
It wasn't a decision that they had made.
They didn't want to leave the military.
And they were forced to.
And as it stands now, we still work with serving military guys.
And they have there are kind of recovery offices within regimens and stuff.
So if somebody is either has a.
Or more often now is, is suffering from sort of mental health issues.
Then they have recovery officers within their, those departments
and they will work with them.
And those recovery officers are quite good now at looking out with
and pointing serving personnel to programs like ourselves.
Or there's, there's some sailing programs or there's yoga retreats or, so they
have got, over the last 15 years got so much better about using these more
holistic wellbeing programs for them.
Rupert Isaacson: But you are dealing with people who are, as you say, in this
transition obviously you are dealing with serving military as well, but when,
when people are in this situation where a change is being forced upon them and
they're wondering like, Jay was what's going to be my place in the world?
Mm-hmm.
Now Jay was lucky of course that he knew that when he met you all, that
was gonna be a vocational step for him.
Do you get other military who then want to come and work with you?
Have you then added them to your team and what do you, you obviously you
can't do that with everyone, so what.
Do you guys do in terms of helping people to look to the next stages?
Emma Hutchison: I think so.
So when the guys who are serving come to us, they're either transitioning
out or they are trying to get themselves well enough to stay in.
Now a lot of them will come here thinking that they want to stay in because that's
all they know and they're terrified of going out into the civilian world.
And then when they come here and they meet some of the staff, hear some of the
stories meet our mentors because we have mentors on our military programs, have
been through the whole process themselves.
And we just kind of talk about these guys.
They've all got amazing transferable skills that they don't understand.
They don't realize what they're capable, what they've learned to, you know, some of
these, the submariners, for example, are crazy what they, engineering wise, they
know, and yet they think, oh, but how am I gonna get a job in the outside world?
Well, of course you are your highly intelligent, super talented,
got all these qualifications.
Of course you're gonna get a job.
You just have to have that confidence to go out there and sell yourself.
And that's what these guys are not good at.
They don't the ones coming to us generally, it's
confidence, it's self-esteem.
It's, it's, it's those kind of issues that they just need to be, we kind of
say that coming here is a reset button.
And if by coming to us for a week just allows them to, to put their
life on hold and stop all, everything that is spiraling outta control.
The fact that they are in a recovery program that they have been flagged
up by a recovery officer, that people do know that they've got mental health
issues and they're still serving, that in itself is a whole kind of issue.
So come here, press that stop button and don't think about that.
Just be with these, these other people who are going through the same thing.
Everybody, again, you kind of sit around the table and as Jay sort of
touched on with a physical injury, it's very easy for people to say, oh,
I understand why you are here because you know, you're, you're missing an arm
or you're missing a leg, or whatever.
It's, but when they sit around the table and say, I dunno, I, I don't, I'm, I
dunno if I'm allowed to be here because I've just got PTD or I've only got this.
And within 24 hours they stay at a house because our military
program is a residential program.
They stay at the house and they, they, part of the whole thing is that
they have to cook meals together.
And they have to say, right, who's gonna cook?
Who's gonna do the dishes, who's gonna clean up?
And these conversations are led by our mentors and they just
start to find out, well actually.
I'm, this happened to me.
Oh, enough, same thing.
Something similar happened to that person over there.
So they are able to then, because it's, for some reason they can't talk
to families and friends about it.
Military, they're a funny bunch.
They, they just, you know, they keep together, they keep closed up, but they
can talk to each other about stuff that they can't, us civilians and outsiders.
So the, so the military programs is residential because they
come from the whole of the uk.
So it had to be residential.
It includes the horses, which they do in the morning.
It includes the other things.
So the bushcraft, the photography, the breath work, the archery, the Pilates.
It includes all of those other activities that we do in the afternoon because we
have to do something in the afternoon because they can't work with the horses
all day and they can't go home because they've come from Devon or whatever.
So that's why we, we started off doing these other activities.
And then what we found is that in actual fact, somebody does Pilates for the
first time and then says, my goodness, I'm gonna do this when I go home.
So you've given them something that they can then take home because
we can't give them a horse to take home, but they can take breath work
or the archery or whatever it is, and go, actually I'm try do that.
So.
Evening, sitting around the campfire, talking to each other, cooking
food together, opening up, having the conversations and laughing.
And the difference between when these people arrive on the Monday
with their kind of shoulders down and their no eye contact.
And,
and then by Wednesday the shoulders have started to lift the, you start to get
the eye contact and then the whole yard turns into this before and swearing and
banter and, you know, the, the competition between the Army guys and the Marines
and the Navy and difference between the tri services and things like that.
It, it's just phenomenal.
But as I say, it's a combination of, of all of the stuff that
goes into this course that works.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm intrigued that you use photography.
Mm.
How did that evolve and what, what do you observe that giving?
Emma Hutchison: If I'm honest, we were just looking for another activity.
Mm.
And we happened to have somebody that was very good at photography
and we've all got these phones.
Yeah.
Nobody knows.
And they've all got these amazing cameras in them and nobody knows
you take a photograph, nobody edits them or does anything.
I was completely unaware of all the things that I've got on my phone that
I can do to improve the photographs.
And so we literally had somebody come and teach us our staff and run
some sessions with the courses and it was an absolute game changer.
And some of the photographs
phenomenal.
So something.
But has actually become quite a popular other activity.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, the reason why that really intrigues me and as
you know, like with movement method, we have that, you know, as well as
horse by method and ta So we're always saying, don't just do horse stuff.
It's not enough.
You know, you've gotta, as you say, send people home with other things.
The photography that you're talking about intrigues me because
I can see how that's hunting.
Its stealth and capture, it's also perspective taking.
You know, you have to look from outside the situation into the situation.
It's also changing the situation because you can take an image and that image
can also be emotional, internal, right?
And then you can rewrite it.
You can say, well actually no, I, I think I'd like to edit that outcome.
And I think there's a subliminal message that can come with that, which is to
say you can actually reedit your past.
You, you, you don't have to say, this is my story.
If it's no longer serving you or if it's too painful, you, you can work
with that story and you can rewrite that story and you can affect that story.
And you, you can turn out 25 versions of that story with, you
know, through different filters, all of which serve different purposes.
And I can, I could see how even if you didn't make it.
Explicit in the language when you were talking through the photography
skills, how that could come across.
So when you said photography, my ears pricked up.
I was like, Ooh, I think I've gotta nick that for our program.
Thanks Emma.
Because it's
Emma Hutchison: really simple because you just go to wherever and we do, we
take them into the woods or we take them down to the, the stream or something
and just say, well, what do you see?
And they, everybody sees different things and you'll get, some of them
will be lying on the ground, taking a photograph of a stone or a leaf.
Somebody else is talk, reaching up as tall as they can to take things in the trees.
Or somebody's seen a rabbit or a stone or whatever it is.
Everybody sees the same thing differently.
And so you come back with all these amazing photographs from literally
just standing in a small area.
Rupert Isaacson: Have you, have you collected some of
these photographs together?
Do you publish any of them or exhibit any of them?
Emma Hutchison: Our to-do thing, we keep saying we must do it.
We have got some great photos.
I
Rupert Isaacson: wanna go to that exhibition.
Yeah,
Emma Hutchison: yeah.
No, we must do that actually.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, I was thinking you could even make that in your arena,
like, constantly changing art exhibition.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, of like every few months you perhaps change, change it,
and then you could publish and sell those, those those images images of transition.
I love it.
Note to self, have this conversation further with Emma and let's
see what we can come up with.
It's so inventive what you're doing.
I love it.
Okay, so you don't, of course just work with military.
You've pivoted to schools, you've pivoted to adult mental
health and that sort of thing.
What precipitated that change?
Because I, again, I know quite a lot of programs that are veterans
programs or first responders programs that really stick very much with that
population because it is a fairly specific set of experiences that
have brought those people there.
Again, I was really intrigued when I ran across your program saying, but hold on,
they're doing all these other things too.
How did that evolve?
Emma Hutchison: So we started with the military for the
reasons that I've spoken about.
We are a charity, we have to bring in funds.
And around about those times when we started, there was funding
for military programs because everybody felt this affinity with
what the guys were going through.
About five years into it, we were talking to one of the guys from the,
the lead military charities and he said, you have to get all of your eggs
outta this basket because this, this pot of funding that there is at the
moment is not gonna be there forever.
And it is, it disappear quickly.
So you need to.
And coincidentally at the same time as this happened, we were approached by
the headmaster of one of the secondary schools up here who said, I have
got a group of 15-year-old boys and we don't know what to do with them.
They are just absolutely outta control.
We dunno what to do with them.
Can we send them up to you?
So I kind of did that and whatever, and of course the boys
said, absolutely send them here.
So we had this group of, of boys and they were fundamentally lacking some sort of
alpha male input into their lives, really.
And one thing we do have here is quite a lot of alpha male energy.
Yes, you
Rupert Isaacson: do.
I've been up that.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
So, which is
Rupert Isaacson: unusual in a therapeutic riding at equine assisted, you know, unit.
'cause normally it's, you know, 90, 95% female.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
So they sent these guys up here, and again, it was absolutely transformational.
The, the boys were given some boundaries, given some rules.
They were given some consequences if they reacted or didn't do what
they were asked to do in a very, you know, polite way or whatever.
They were told to run around the arena three times.
And they soon, it sounds like terrible bootcamp, doesn't it?
But it, it was just, they hadn't experienced anything like that before.
And, after a few hours.
They loved it.
They loved that kind of release of energy.
When we work with the schools groups, the first hour that we do with the
schools groups is not in a classroom.
It's not with the horses.
It's basically dependent on the weather.
If it's raining, it's in the indoor arena.
If it's not, it's in the outdoor arena and we build obstacle
courses and we play around it.
So for the first hour that they're hear the phones go into
a box that they're taken away.
And these kids literally, they have to move because again,
children are not active enough
these days.
Yeah, I agree.
Emma Hutchison: They'll moan and groan and whatever, but again, by day
two, they're absolutely loving it.
And you find out all sorts of things about somebody who's actually really
accurate with a round of bat and somebody else can catch really well
and somebody else can run really fast.
And yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: When you say that they, the lads, your ex-military team, and I'd
like to talk, I'd like you to talk to us a bit more about who you team are.
Obviously we've met Jay, but I've met some of your other team too.
And I, I think it would be helpful for listeners if you could introduce them
when they said, okay, go run around the arena three times, you know, of course
some teenage boys might say, what f you?
And then of course it is not the military, so you can't actually follow
up with any physical consequences.
So what did you just find that simply taking that approach.
Was accepted by those boys because there was actually this sort of need for it.
And the boys themselves, somewhere from within knew that they needed
that or because, because that's a risk to take, isn't it, to say,
okay, here's the consequence, run around the arena three times, or
give me 20 press up or something.
And then the person says, well, no, I'm not gonna do that.
And then you haven't really got much to follow it up with.
So it's a, it's an interesting risk to take.
Yeah.
So just talk to us a little bit about that.
Emma Hutchison: This is where Jay is an expert.
I have fallen to this a couple of times where I have sort of
said there was one incident when we had, again, a particularly
difficult group of teenagers here.
And we were all sat around the you've got a kind of fire pit kind of
thing with a parachute over the top.
We sat there having a chat in the morning and this kid was just constantly talking
and on his phone and I said, I'd really like you to move because I'd like you to
move over there so that you're not next to, and he looked at me and he looked
at me and he looked at me and I thought, oh no, this is gonna go horribly wrong.
It's not gonna move.
And about 20 sort of 30 seconds, we had this sort of eye contact.
And then my heart was going, and then he suddenly stood up and he moved
and he went and sat down and my heart kind of went down and I relaxed and
thought, I've got away with that.
But I came back to Jay and said, oh.
Said Emma never do that without a playing plan B.
And I said, well, what would plan B have been?
He said, you'd have left him sitting there and you move everybody else.
So Jay has these plans when he's working with the kids because he's
generally the one that works with them in that environment where if somebody
doesn't want to do something, well everybody else will move somewhere else.
And then that person is where they are, but now they're not with their,
all their friends in their little gang because their friends in their
little gang have moved somewhere else.
So then they want to be where you want to be, so they're gonna
do what you ask them to do.
So it's not by force or anything like that.
It's by not mind games even.
It's just clever skills that, I dunno where he got 'em from, but yeah, he's got
these things all in his little toolbox that he can manage to assess any situation
and, and get these kids to do this without realizing that they're doing it
Rupert Isaacson: interest.
So interesting to me.
Okay.
Talk to us a little bit about the other members of the team now.
I met taf for example.
When I came up, I met Jock.
Jock wasn't as around as I would've liked.
So I, I didn't get a lot of time with him when I was with you.
But I could see, you know, extremely, extremely charismatic man with bringing
his own ex-military experience.
Just talk us through a little bit the team you've got.
'cause it really is unusual to find such a male.
Presence in an equine assisted team.
Emma Hutchison: So Jock, my husband so he basically was a Royal Marine
commando and a helicopter pilot in the military for 10 years.
So he also has had a passion for horses since he was a child.
He has a DHD.
He can't sit still for more than 15 minutes.
That's on a good day.
He is absolutely passionate about this type of work, about helping people.
He's been through his own kind of mental health issues and so feels really empathy
for those that are going through it.
And he, his huge skill is being able to connect with people on that.
First, they come up the drive and you've got him in his cowboy hat
and his chaps and his horse kind of saying, hi, come with me and I'll
just talk to you about me and my horse and the relationship that we have.
And he's able to, within that 45 minutes to an hour, be able to get
somebody to say, wow, this is, this is a place that I want to come to.
I understand that I, I too could have a relationship with
a horse and with another person.
And I, I, I do it annoyingly with, with anybody who here.
Whether it's autistic kids, whether it's military guys, whether it's
Wi Ladies, whether the whole, he, they come and they just think that
Jock is the best thing since Slice.
He then hands them over to us and it is almost like his, his bit, his
kind of showmanship, which is his his main kind of role is, is, is done.
And then we, so we kind of wheel him in and wheel him out as and as
and when he's needed because he's amazing for these other things.
But again, the energy with Jock can be quite high because that's what
he's, so as I say, we have to wheel him in and then wheel him back.
But again, he does all the PR stuff and the marketing stuff and things like that.
And he's a very good ideas person.
So he'll come up with these, what about this?
Why don't we speak to these people?
What about this, what about, and, and most of the ideas you say, no, but every now
and then there's, there's one that you go, Hmm, naturally if we put that thought
into that, we could work with that.
So that's, that's him.
We then have ta who runs our, it was the Princess Trust program.
It's now the King's Trust.
So that's our Youth 12 week youth development program where it's
for 16 to 25 year olds and they come here for 12 solid weeks.
And throughout that time, they work with the horses.
They do all the other activities that I've already mentioned.
They have a week where they do, they go out and do adventurous activities.
So they, we hire e-bikes for them and we make them e-bike up
some hills and things like that.
They do river walks, they do camp out.
Which bizarrely bearing in mind that we live in Aberdeen, she, a lot of
these kids have never stayed away from home or let alone camped out.
So it's a huge deal for a lot of these kids to go away on this.
And it, this is a residential week apart.
12 weeks is a residential program.
They do work experience, they do I do that a community project.
So one of the community projects was they went around one of the local estates and
they cleaned all of these old a hundred year old well rest and be thankful things.
So when the old Drovers used to bring the cattle and the sheep
along, they would, they have these rest and be thankful water things.
So they cleaned all those for community project.
They cleaned a load of tracks.
So it's an amazing project that they do.
Path is retired officially from the military.
He's in his early sixties.
He was in the military for 40 odd years.
Rupert Isaacson: What did he do?
Emma Hutchison: He was in the pioneers, so he was, he was in
as a noncommissioned officer to.
And then ended up
Rupert Isaacson: to ask you about who the pioneers are because I,
that's quite an interesting branch of the British military, which I
think a lot of American listeners and some would not be familiar with,
Emma Hutchison: I think I'm not a great expert on this, but
they basically build things.
So if you go somewhere and you need a bridge build tool, something, whatever,
the pioneers of the people that go in with the expertise to build the
bridge to get the tanks over, right.
So, he's a really charismatic guy.
He, the last few years that he was in, he worked at the OTC, which is
the young officers in the university.
So working with young, young people again.
And he now runs this program and he's absolutely amazing at it.
Yeah.
So you have taf, you have Joanne, who's our admin lady who again
is married to an ex Navy pilot.
So again, you've got the Navy connection there.
And then you have my daughter, Charlotte, who you know, support
you through and through, she's done a psychology degree, so she's
interested in, in all that side of it.
And then we've got Georgia, who is one of our school leavers.
So she came on one of our schools programs about four years ago.
She then came here on work experience and she's now employed as a, as a yard person.
She's amazing.
And then we've got some guys down south who, again, more ex-military
guys who when we are running programs elsewhere, or they'll come up and
be involved in the, the program.
Are is,
Rupert Isaacson: are these the people that you refer to as your mentors?
Emma Hutchison: No.
So these, that's our kind of southern team
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Are
Emma Hutchison: basically people who have been through the program and then we have
recognized certain skills with them and thought, Hmm, that's somebody that will
be amazing as a mentor for other people.
So we then put them on a mentors and an additional program that Jay's
put together and they come up here and they, they given, you know,
things about boundaries and, and sort of additional skills to help.
And
Rupert Isaacson: these would be people who transitioned out of the military
exactly as we were talking about earlier.
Gone through that identity crisis and then have come out on the other
side of it and have created careers and lives in the civilian world.
Emma Hutchison: So they have all been through huge, huge processes themselves.
So they have got the empathy, but as you say, they have, they still, they,
they would all quite happily admit that they're still on their journey.
I think we're all on some sort of journey, but they all happily say,
well, you know, some of them are working others are, are not working.
We've got John, who is 79, he's an ex Royal Marine.
He is the fittest, 79-year-old you will ever see.
And he's amazing.
And he said, this is what.
He up here four or five times a year, and he's just brilliant.
So they're kind of like, you know, mom and dad at the house dependent on age.
Rupert Isaacson: But that's such a clever way to organize because I think a lot
of organizations like ours that, you know, the manpower thing is, is massively
tricky because it's, you know, humans are expensive and also entirely necessary.
Yeah.
And then you don't always have so much work
for the whole team.
So to have these people that, you know, are adjunct, that come in
and come out who've also graduated through your program, I think
there's actually a lot that a lot of listeners could learn from with that.
Because one of the, as you can imagine, I go around doing a lot of
trainings and one of the things I hear regularly is I haven't got the
capacity, the human capacity for the amount of work I need to do, or that
is coming in and I can't yet fundraise for all those full-time salaries.
And, you know, I can't necessarily hire those full-time salaries
until I know that those people are.
Worth, you know, able to fully integrate into this program because,
you know, and then they might be out on a limb geographically like you are.
So that, you know, the equivalent in the USA, they might be in the mountains
of Colorado or they might be, you know, some of the places we have in Ireland.
And there's a difficulty because people then have to relocate from
somewhere else to do that job.
And then you're taking a big risk, you're taking a punt on that person.
And if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, so much has been invested and they
have had to do so many life changes to get themselves up to Northern Scotland or, you
know, find a job, find, find, find a place to live and to, if it doesn't work out.
But, so your idea of, of people coming in and out in, in this sort of mentor role
and also having a sort of team that's down south where the big populations are that
can then seasonally if you like, bring people to and front, I think that's really
inventive and you might underestimate yourselves a little bit there.
I think there's a lot that many of us running these programs could learn
from you all in how you organize that.
How did you come up with that concept?
Because it's, it's quite original.
Emma Hutchison: We because of the vulnerability of the military
guys and because they were still serving, we were basically taking
a group of guys, putting them into a, into a house, and I, I am Mrs.
Health and Safety, I had real concerns about, you know, a lot of these guys
mentally were just fragile and I wasn't happy about putting them in a house
without some sort of supervision.
So initially when we started, we would have a, a member staff stay in the
house with them and it just didn't work because they felt that they were being
Yeah,
Emma Hutchison: constantly And you know, tail been told and all this sort of stuff.
And so again, it, it, we, we just got some great people who came on the court
courses early on and just said, look, how do you feel about if we, if we are, we're
always there at the end of the phone.
If something happens, then we're at the end of the phone.
How do you feel about going in as the person who meets and greets?
So, the mentor's always there because our program runs on a on a Monday morning,
but everybody flies up, drives up, drive, whatever it is on the Sunday.
So they have that first awful night in the house where they don't know anybody.
They don't know what they're going to do because they've got this vague
sort of story of what horseback does, but they still don't really
know what they're coming to.
They might be hundreds of miles away from home.
They're extremely anxious and they're met by one of our mentors
who say, hi, it's great to see you.
I've made some Nathan, I've got chili on the whatever.
But they already, they have these group chats beforehand.
So they already start to get to know each other and interact and has
anybody got any diet requirements?
Have you got any favorite recipes?
Do you need to bring a soft pillow or any of these kind of things to make them
start to feel a little bit comfortable.
You know, are you army or you navy?
Are you the same regimen as me or whatever?
And then the mentor meets them on the door and says, look
mate, I've been where you were.
I was anxious.
I was the one who, who didn't want to go up the drive, who didn't wanna
get outta the car, who was terrified to come here and nearly didn't get on
the plane, but you've made it here.
That's the first step.
Come on in.
And the thing is, again, about the military dependent on which
army you were in, you call a cup of tea, a wet or a something else.
There's this camaraderie that they instantly have that Oh, I, I was in the,
I dunno, I get very confused by all.
So they, they have this instant, they'll
Rupert Isaacson: have their private languages.
Yeah, tribal languages.
And
Emma Hutchison: they always know somebody who knows somebody
who's dad knew somebody.
It's absolutely nuts that everybody on every single course has always
got somebody who's known, somebody who's known somebody kind of thing.
So by the time they come to us on that Monday morning, they go off
and get a cup of tea in the kitchen.
We bring the mentors in and say, right, how was it?
And they've already sussed everybody out and they can say, oh, you know,
he's, he needs to be, he's a bit quiet.
We need to just bring him forward.
And that helps me because I very quickly have to allocate the horses
for that first day from quite a.
Knowledge because again, the knowledge that you get on
the phone and the application forms is, is irrelevant really.
So it's that the feedback that I get from the mentors and then literally
just that first kind of bit around the table and having that first cup of tea.
And I'd say it is amazing though.
Rarely do I get it wrong with the, the horses and we have to change them.
You can generally suss people out because they're, they're most
vulnerable then, and then they, it, it's really apparent what they need.
Even if they're trying to mask it.
You can see, well this, this is somebody who needs to be more confident
and stand up and be more assertive.
So I'm gonna give them poll because poll is a big old co and you know,
if you're not assertive with her, she's gonna drag you over the field
to get the long bit of grasp thing.
So
Rupert Isaacson: do, do you feel that that's a system that you could train
other equine assisted groups in and how to identify, find and deploy these mentors?
'cause I think this is, this is something that sort of hasn't
occurred to a lot of people.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
And we've got mentors.
We have got mentors course that Jay's put together, which is actually an
sqa Scottish Qualifications Authority qualification where it can be so they
can come and get an actual qualification.
But the thing is with them, we are really grateful to them and
we really grateful to because
right.
Emma Hutchison: They don't wanna be away from, they love coming
to horseback, horseback, they are part of the horseback family one.
We always kind of joke, you know, once you're here, you're
never away from the family.
You are part of this dysfunction family.
And so they love and they're, they're continuing their journey and they
feel they are giving something back.
They are helping other people.
And that's, you know, that's the sort of circle that we wanna kind of be able to
Rupert Isaacson: do.
Some of these mentors also come and help you on the non-military
program, so they help you with the troubled youth and the kids and Yeah.
Yeah.
I, I think, I think what we need to do is maybe after this podcast maybe
do a, a, a webinar for our stu for our members on new trails learning systems,
you know, who are all running programs.
I think that people would be fascinated by this possibility that if you weren't
connected to the military in the way that you guys are, you wouldn't know that there
are these networks that you can tap into.
And it might not occur to people who are in the military or transitioning
outta the military that they could become mentors in programs like these,
unless they're, you know, so you guys really bridge could serve as a bridge I
feel, between the more civilian end of equine assisted, which is most of it.
And really solving a lot of these, these dilemmas which people have
of not enough team members, but not enough money to hire people.
Full time and can't really rely on volunteers all the time
because it's not, it's not fair.
And b, if you not paying people, they sort of can't show up all the time.
And that a lot of people get caught in that time, in, in,
in that particular dilemma.
It seems like you guys have really found an amazing way through that.
So with your permission, I think we'll ask you to come and
do some consulting with that.
You talk about allocating horses.
Talk to me about the horses.
Talk to me about how you train and prepare the horses.
Talk to me about, you know, obviously there's, how many horses have you got?
How, how do you keep them?
Talk me through the equine end.
Emma Hutchison: So we we're lucky, we have plenty of space.
We have a herd of 40 horses who dietary requirements allowing we've got a big
in the, in the winter we have fields around the, the house and the stables.
So they live in smaller herds around the, in the winter because,
because that's what has to happen.
In the summer we've got a 40 acre hill field which pretty much most of the
herd go out two, certainly in the next two weeks, and it'll be up on the hill.
The grass is just starting to grow now and then we've got another 40 acre.
Of rough, what we call rough ground.
So it is literally rough ground, all sorts of different types of grasses.
Go bushes, bits of little bits of woodland and stuff.
And I mean, you talk to Jay about the, the bush, one of the, the best
activities that we do with the kids is dependent on the time of the year.
If the horses are out in the rough ground, it's kind of like, guys, you're
gonna have to go find your horses because you literally can lose these horses
and you can take half an hour sort of marching across this bit going just
Rupert Isaacson: to locate them.
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: And then you can locate it, but you can't get to it
because there's a huge break horse that you can't go through unless
you've got the highland pony that just literally goes straight through it.
So I mean, our, our thing is that they're kept as naturally as they possibly can be.
Happy horses in that sort of environment, may working with them,
for them doing their job very easy.
It means that we don't have to worry about you know, whether this horse
is gonna kick that horse or whatever when we are working with them in more
enclosed spaces because they've, they've dealt with all that in the fields.
They all know the hierarchy and never think about, you know,
don't go near that horse because it's it's mean kind of thing.
So they have all sorted out the horse, sort all that out.
We have bred some of our own horses, so easy to just bring into
the workplace and start working.
Because coming in as, and getting tied up.
Herd.
And people are always amazed when they come up here that we can have 20 horses.
We've got the, the corral in the center of our kind of stead.
We tie the horses all up there.
They don't get hay nets.
They just get tied up and they just stand.
And they'll stand there whilst they're groomed.
They'll stand there all together.
And our young horses learn how to stand because everybody else is standing
and that's what you do sort of thing.
So we start the youngsters coming in with, with the other horses.
And then they'll just start to get groomed.
We do do a lot of groundwork with them because part of the programs that our guys
do is simple things like backing a horse up or drawing a horse into you, or being
able to just move its back end around.
So it's just very simple kind of horsemanship that we do.
So all of our horses need to be able to do that to ensure that
every individual that asks the horse to back up is going to get a win.
So the horses are all kind of taught from a, a certain command
and a, and a and a noise.
And the, the people who come on the are told, well do this bit
of pressure, ask with this noise, and the horse will back up.
So the horses have to be trained to a certain standard to get that win.
Probably 50 of them are ridden.
So again, those are all started in Holter.
They're generally started bare back.
Once you can walk rot and can to bare background in a Holter, then
we might decide to put a saddle on.
So that, and again, they're just so used to being around each other.
It's just a really simple process.
So we do put saddles on them, but we ride in side falls.
We don't ride in bridals.
So again, we ride kind of like with a, if people are riding, then they'll ride
with a kind of like a Luc range because again, I've got this real phobia of,
of kids in riding schools, balancing on their hands and things like that.
So I'm just we need to be as kind to the horses as we can.
When they do ride, the first thing that we tend to do, we used to, we used to do
a lot more of the like, let's get you on.
But actually now I've kind of changed a bit, and the first time that people
will get on is actually bareback.
So their first experience of riding a horse will be bareback,
whether it's the kids or, or the adult or the military guys.
Because again, it is just about that closeness.
And again, it's, it's, it's not about riding a horse, it's
about having that connection.
It is about feeling the way that the horse is moving and we'll get them to,
you know,
Emma Hutchison: touch their toes or put their arm up or
maybe close their eyes and.
They're riding, but they, it's not about the riding.
And then they get off and say, I want to do this again.
I want to do more.
So then we can do more.
And then we might put the saddle on.
We might not put a saddle along.
We might do some obstacle courses.
We might end up going for a trail ride round the rough ground.
When we do that, you end up being followed by several Shetlands, which
can be slightly intimidating sometimes.
But or as I say, we might take them off onto the, the trail where we bundle
them all in the lorry and they go for the big kind of trail rides and then
the, the guys camp out every night.
So, as I say, the horses have all got, they've all got
things that they enjoy more.
So we've got the horses that love being groomed.
There's always some horses that are a bit nonplus about being groomed.
We've got horses that are fantastic at groom groundwork.
We've got horses that are very good in the round pen.
We do do some some stuff in the, and we've got some horses that are good at that.
We've got others that love being ridden.
We've got ones that can be ridden, but they don't.
We able to, because we've got the space and the put the
horses into the job that they.
Good at and love, which means they're better at the job that they do
because they love it kind of thing.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: And they're more, more generous when it comes to
occasionally being asked to do a job.
Well, okay, maybe that's not my favorite job, but, alright.
Yeah, yeah.
You also though, you, you guys are accomplished rider in the,
in the sport world as well.
You guys event your and your daughter's event and so on.
So it's interesting that you, you cross, you know, it's, it's, I'm
always intrigued by people that cross over between those worlds because
one of the if you like, curses of the equestrian world is that I always feel
people over specialize as like, I am only a natural horsemanship person.
I only do western pleasure, or I am, you know, a show jumper.
But I'm not interested in that dressage stuff or I'm only a dressage writer.
It's like,
why
Rupert Isaacson: not do it all?
You know?
I mean, horses, pe presumably like variety in the same way that people do.
So I was quite intrigued when I came to you to see that aspect.
What do you feel that the involvement in eventing brings to the assisted
program and from an equine standpoint and from a human standpoint?
Like what, talk to me about that cross-fertilization that also happens
within your own family as well.
So this makes for an interesting mosaic.
Emma Hutchison: I think.
I mean, anybody who, kind of connection with their partner, the horse, because
otherwise, I mean, there are people who will do it, but I personally, I
think, and, and I think in eventing as well, because it's so extreme,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
You have to trust the horse with your life.
Yeah.
You
Emma Hutchison: have to have, yeah.
I mean, you, you cannot make a horse jump what these guys are jumping.
The horse has to wanna, and, and you're not gonna get the
right stride the whole time.
So you are putting your trust in that horse to get the two of you over.
And you have to you have to give the horse the capacity to think.
And I think that that's what I always say is the difference personally that
I feel between your more traditional English riding and your more sort of
Western horsemanship is that in the, the western side, you tend to put a
little bit more hands on, a little bit more responsibility on the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: As someone that lives in Texas for over 20 years, I'd say
you see exactly the same spectrum of bad and good in the western world
that you do in the English world.
But yes a good horseman does do that.
Yes.
Yeah.
So,
Emma Hutchison: So again, what what we've, what we've done is with the, the
horses that we used to compete on mm-hmm.
They're still used.
They still benefit from all of the other stuff.
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
Emma Hutchison: That we do with the horses here.
Rupert Isaacson: And do they get involved in the program as well just
or is there like, oh no, you guys are the posh horses over there and you guys
are the, the rough horses over there or do they all actually muck in together?
Emma Hutchison: There is a bit of like, well these are the posh
horses over here, but when we're wanting to show what you can achieve
with what now,
Emma Hutchison: this is when you've got a a a sort of top level partnership,
this is what you can achieve.
And we've got one of the, the thoroughbreds who is very extreme and
it's taken a lot of, a lot of work with her to sort of be able to teach her, to
bring her anxiety down and, and sort of, so we can use her to show, this is a horse
that was at the top of its game, was a kind of race horse is basically designed
to run this is, this is long legs.
She runs she doesn't want to be made to stand still and do kind
of little things, but we've taught her that actually it can be fun.
So we do a lot of liberty stuff with her and taught her to sort of come in a
whistle and, and the kids love all that.
If you can kind of have a horse sort of countering around you in a circle in
the field and then you whistle and it kind of runs to you and nozzles in the
kids are like, wow, that's just amazing.
And we've got some of the horses that are, are quite capable of doing that with these
kids and they just, they just love it.
Just being followed around by.
The individuals.
We have got a herd of an aging herd, which again, we, we bred some horses
because we did think we'll buy there.
By this time these horses will no longer be with us.
We have got now quite a herd of 20, 20, 30-year-old who are still have come out
this winter particularly well and actually have been used on the program last week.
They just come in, they get a groom.
They love that.
That's kind of where they're at the moment.
And then we've got some little mini Shetlands because we get
big six foot, six raw marines who are terrified of horses and
literal
Emma Hutchison: terrified horses.
So you bring this thing that is the size of a Labrador out and say, you're
having a laugh if you're telling me that you, you're frightened of that.
And then they kind of say, okay, fair enough.
Rupert Isaacson: And then why not disclosing to them that the most
terrifying equine they will ever encounter is in fact a Shetland pony.
But hey,
Emma Hutchison: well, exactly.
Yeah.
They are the horrors.
So we've got, we've got lots of different, we've got thoroughbreds,
we've got cos we've got quarter horses, we've got Irish drafts, we've
got a whole spectrum of, of horses.
We've got horses that we've rescued, we've got things that we were given whatever.
And they've all kind of found their, their little place, but they, they're
just but as I say, it, it fascinating how we had one horse last week with
one of the military with a lady and he.
And I don't know why I made this match with this lady last week, but I thought,
right, I'm gonna put her with Mikey.
And he just loved her and it was just a match made in heaven.
And I just thought, my goodness, this horse is just having a fantastic week.
He was, every day he was looking for, and he'd come in and it was just amazing.
Just amazing.
So they are, they're funny critters.
And we had, again, we've got one big Irish draft horse who had a, a really
autistic boy who came on one of the schools programs and just, you know,
he didn't want to engage at all.
And so we were out with all the other kids catching the horses and he just stood,
put his head down and just whatever.
And this big old Irish draft was not the horse I was gonna put him with,
but he clocked him from the other side of the field and he, I just saw,
saw him kind of like coming and he just literally came up and he put
his head on this kid's shoulder.
Ah.
Emma Hutchison: So they spent the whole, their, their school program.
He then came back to us about two years later to do the youth development program
and bubbling up here to think about it.
And this kid, having not been here for two years, went into the field
and exactly the same thing happened.
This horse
Emma Hutchison: from a distance sped this child who was then 19
years old and literally went up to him and did the same thing.
Now how does that happen?
Rupert Isaacson: Well, this is one of the things that I am constantly
flawed by, is just when I think I know something about horses, they do.
In, in this type of work that we do, the way that they'll show
up making their own decisions
completely independent of us.
I remember once one of my really good quarter horses who could be aloof.
We had a boy who drowned and was in a pretty vegetative state and
people said, well, can we bring him?
I'm like, sure.
But I, I dunno what you know, but Sure.
And this kid comes out and he's in a wheelchair and he's completely
unresponsive feeding to tube, and my horse clue just comes like you
just described across the field and just sniffs him all over and then
licks him all over from head to toe.
Emma Hutchison: And that's not something that horses do.
That's just, we,
Rupert Isaacson: they don't, and it's not like that he was
my licking horse or something.
No.
And
what ended up happening was the kid ended up riding him and indicating and
responding and, but what was going on
mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: In the sort of other dimensional consciousness.
That the, with, for example, with this autistic boy that you describe and
your horse, something goes on in, in, in, in that field of consciousness
that's outside of our perception.
And it's, I think, I always think that's one of the
things that keeps us in, in this, because it can be quite exhausting
work, as you yourself know.
And then you, you come across these situations relatively regularly and it's
like you are, you are dancing with God.
It's like you Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: But people say to us, how does it work?
And I just say, I don't know.
Yeah.
But I don't need to know.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: And I think that's the best.
Just let it happen because it, it does happen
Rupert Isaacson: now really what we're talking about with the
collective consciousness in that, you know, you can call it God, you
can call it the Akashic record.
You can call it, you know, parallel consciousness as or, but really
it seems to come down to love.
And you know, we've touched on the fact that you operate as an
extended family, but you also operate as a close type family.
What's it been like for you and your children to really grow up together?
Because as you know, parents, kids make their parents grow up, whether
their parents want to or not.
You guys have grown up in this endeavor, as you said.
You know, when the.
Lads were first coming out, it was your fridge, and they might
eat the kids' lunch or dinner.
And the kids sort of having to grow up sharing their space.
I think it's very healthy.
Talk to us about what it's like for you and for them to do this thing as a family.
Emma Hutchison: So, I mean, the, the, the best was Helena
was three when we started this.
And for the first few years, a lot of the guys who were coming
to us had prosthetic legs.
So in our kitchen you would see literally these prosthetic legs all
just leaning against the wall in the kitchen and various other kind of limbs.
So the girls just grew up, they thought that was normal.
But Helena would always, as soon as we got somebody came up to the
house, whether it was on a course or whether it was just somebody else,
she just used to kick them in the shin
quite a while to say,
she said, it's not a real, I said, but, but not everybody has metal legs.
It's, it's, you can't just kick people in the shin.
So she just thought that everybody had these, these kind of amazing
legs that you could kind of kick.
And again, Charlotte used to some of the courses, some of the
prosthetics that they had had feet.
So, you know, I've got decisions of the girls with their eight or nine nail
polish out and they would be nail polish.
Just, you know, and I think a lot of their friends, they just, because
people can find things like that, disfigurement and disability and stuff,
people can find it really difficult.
They don't know how to, how to deal with it.
How to
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Can trigger fear basically.
Yeah.
How, how do
Emma Hutchison: I speak to, I mean, a really good friend of mine
said, well, how do I speak to Jay?
When we first met him, and I said, what do you mean?
How do you speak to Jay?
Well, you know, Jay's got all this stuff that's gone on with him.
I said, but speak to him like he's Jay.
Yeah.
And
Emma Hutchison: she said, okay, but people find barriers.
So my kids had no barriers.
Their friends had no barriers because it was just normal.
They loved it until they got to about 12 or 13, then they hated it.
It was the worst thing when Dad used to go into school to give a presentation
about the charity or everybody would say, oh, what's happening at horseback?
They hated it.
And then that love has kind of come back, sort of 16, 17, suddenly
the, they actually appreciate what we're doing here and see the
differences and have got involved.
And so that kind of passion and that love has come back.
It's not easy working with family.
And obviously Jock and I work together.
We are very different.
We have managed to carve out very different roles within the charity, which
has kind of kept us able to work together.
And as I say, Charlotte's kind of come in now and she's the yard manager
and the horse trailer and stuff.
So she's carved out her role there.
It's difficult, but it is, as I say, I think they're, they're
now very proud of, of, of this.
It's 16 years into it and this kind of legacy that, that they
are part of the horseback family as are their friends actually.
They're, they're kind of kind of proud of it now, but it's been, been
a journey It has, I have to say.
Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
bit about the old master system.
of dressage training.
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
well being of the horse and the rider.
Intrigued?
Like to know more?
Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
Check out the free introduction course.
Take it from there.
What's what's interesting as, as you're talking, I'm just considering, you
know, you've got a core equine team there, which is mother and daughters.
You've got a core male team, which is, okay, now what are we gonna
do with these prepared horses?
And obviously there's integration.
It's not like everyone's confined to a role, but it makes me think
very much of sort of a hunting and gathering community where you do
have to some degree gender roles, but not because anyone's assigned them.
Like, you can't hunt 'cause you're a woman, or you can't
gather 'cause you're a man.
Of course you can.
And actually there's a lot of cross-fertilization people do, but
people find their roles by choice.
So they have agency and then they know how to weave that ecosystem together.
And again, you know, as we know the horse world is, is.
A, you know, just female dominated anyway, except for in the professional
end where you do get a a bit more balance.
But I often observe this, particularly working with autism, that you might get
an basically an all female staff with an almost all male clientele, autistic boys.
And
where's the male role models leadership Now, if you go to a place
that's doing, say, special needs with surfing or mountain sports or
something, the blokes are there.
Mm-hmm.
Rupert Isaacson: But we need them in the horse world.
And you and in the equine programs, you guys have really got that
and you've got the strong women in leadership roles as well.
It's like the best of all worlds.
And I do feel that you guys could and should be out there mentoring other
equine programs saying, look, you gotta kind of have this balance if you
want to balance people's brains and nervous systems because you, without
it, it's, it, it, it, it's weighted.
So that was actually gonna lead me into the next thing I wanted to ask you about.
You guys have started this register and I know that you're also running
courses and people can, now come and train with you to some degree.
And you've also got, you, you, you're, you're busy working stuff out with
Hart Pre College down which is one of the big agricultural colleges
in, in the uk for those listeners in the USA and elsewhere, just the
geography, it's think Alaska to Denver.
You know, it's, it's like the top of the highlands down to Middle England.
It's, it's not round the corner.
But it's a major educational establishment.
So talk to us now about Yeah.
The, the, the register and your educational programs, and then also
how can people, you know, get in touch with the four mentorship.
Emma Hutchison: So Hart came about, I was down there six, seven years
ago, and we got the opportunity to run some pilot programs down there.
Hart is the biggest EQU in the university in the uk.
And it's very traditional.
And they, but they have some members of staff who are quite high up, who,
who are quite innovative and thought that it was a good idea for us to do
some equine assisted services programs.
So we went in.
But
Rupert Isaacson: how, because they're not exactly in your neighborhood, are they?
And so you'd have expected that to happen through a Scottish
college or So Hartery is.
Apples, oranges,
Emma Hutchison: personal relationships basically.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Emma Hutchison: So they kind of invited us to run some programs.
And we basically, you can see, I remember the first day that we went in, you
could see the equine department there thinking, who are this bunch of weirdos
who are saying, can we build an obstacle course and can we do this and can we
just groom the horses in the arena?
And with the kids we're thinking, well, why are they not?
What, what is that for?
Anyway, they, within literally 24 hours, they were all asking if they
could volunteer to help yet find director is just the most amazing guy.
We've run some pilot schemes, we've run some additional programs, and we're
now trying to, I'm going down in a next month to see how do we work out, how
do we fund this on a long term basis because it needs to be sustainable.
It needs to be something that isn't just there a, a week here and a week there.
It needs to be something where they want to bring equine assisted
services to Hartley so that it's a standalone department and
running all sorts of programs for different groups, whether it's kids,
whether it's military, whatever.
So that's a work in progress, but it's really exciting because to say it's
a, an environment that, it's amazing how many horse people still don't
know about equine assisted services.
Rupert Isaacson: E.
Exactly.
And what I think what's changing, particularly in the UK and Ireland,
is that it used to be, you know, RDA and RDA was volunteer and
therefore you didn't get paid.
So you had to either be, you know, you were usually a lady of a certain
age who didn't need to work, so you were gonna put your time into that,
or someone who was really drawn to it and you were gonna kind of work for
nothing because you felt this calling.
But things have changed now and quite recently, you know, it's now a career
track and it can be a, a decently paid career track, but this is all quite new.
So you're, you're right, a lot of people aren't aware of it, dunno about it.
And they might be going into the equine industry thinking, well, I've
got to go into the sport end, but that's already saturated with, you
know, people and competition and anyway, there's no security there.
Or like everything in sport, unless you float up to the very, very top, it's,
yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So, yeah.
Talk, talk to us about how you guys are developing that and, and looking for
the funding for those sorts of programs.
And, and again, also tell us about this register that you guys have
put together and what that's for.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
How it sort of came about is as I say, were looking to then Harvey,
were then looking to run an equine assisted program as, as a qualification.
And then they realized that that part of the, the program needs to be sending
people out to do practical work.
And actually they didn't know who they were going to be sending
people out to students X Right.
To, they couldn't, how they didn't know if, if, if these people that
they were gonna be sending them out to were going to be any, any good.
So they kind of, pulled that back.
And at the same time we had myself and some other people had got together
because I was been constantly contacted saying I want to do what you do.
How do you do it?
Where'd you raise the money?
You know, whatever.
And I thought, you know, it's, this has taken years and years of us doing this.
It's a really hard slog.
But there are lots of people out there who are doing amazing jobs,
but there's also lots of people who don't have the right insurance.
Whether they, they know or they dunno.
They, they possibly just dunno that they don't have the right insurance.
There's a real thing within equine assisted services that you suddenly
bring a horse into the environment and you've become an expert in a
field that you've got no knowledge in.
Mm-hmm.
Just
Emma Hutchison: because you,
so, group of us got together and formed this register, which is part equine.
Now the aim of this,
Rupert Isaacson: what's the register called?
Emma Hutchison: The register's called the Human Equine Interaction Register.
It's called Air, HEIR.
And that sits under this Equine Services Partnership.
And basically the idea behind that is that it, it's there to
protect and promote providers.
So, you know, service people that, that actually deliver to
protect the participants and to protect the horses as well.
That's the main aims to things like making sure that people have got the
right insurance in place, that you stick to your scope of practice that you are
considering animal welfare, that you're not just doing this to earn a few extra
buck on top of your riding school kind of thing that you're doing, whatever.
It's, so, so it's now got, I think, close on a hundred different members
that are from single people members doing it to organizations like ourselves.
And we've got the second annual general meeting that's being held at heart
rate on the, is it the 8th of April?
And again, it's about sharing information.
It's about learning from each other.
It's not about being modality specific.
I don't care what what model you use, as long as you're doing good
work and you're being kind to the horses, you've got the right.
Insurance is in place and you are doing what you are, you've got the skills to do.
So.
If you are, if you, if you're not a therapist, don't say that you're
doing therapy or don't try and do therapy, leave that to the qualifier.
Rupert Isaacson: How, how do you, if you like police this though, how
do you, how do you, because are you actually traveling around and doing
inspections on each individual place or?
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: So it's, as it stands at the moment, it's a voluntary membership.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Emma Hutchison: We are asked, we would ask, somebody would apply and
we would ask for specific documents.
Have you got qualifications, whatever, to show that you say what you're doing.
And then as far as things like the welfare, it's basically just
saying, these are the standards.
Do you apply to this?
I mean, we, at the moment, we, we, we don't police it, but it is basically
pushing the emphasis on that individual to say, yes, I, I do, this is what
I do, and I sign up to these values.
That's as far as we got at the moment, is that, and we've,
it's been a big job to get
Rupert Isaacson: I am sure
have that You're dealing with a lot of strong personalities and
very independent minded people too.
Yeah.
But I think we can all agree that we're in this interesting transition with that EQU
assisted world, but people like you and I, who kind of ended it up in it by default
and now are sort of 20 years in realize that you, it would be helpful to have.
Some forms of regulation and standardization and at the same time, that
can very quickly kill the whole thing.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And how do you dance that line?
And the answer is that any of us says, well, we don't know, but if
we don't try, then shame on us.
So I can see the, I can see that the real value there.
Your, the, the meeting that's coming.
So listeners, we're, we're doing this interview in March, early March of 2025.
And so Emma, you've just said this is meeting will happen on the 8th
of April, but presumably if you're listening, if you find this podcast
in a year from now, whatever, there'll be more meetings coming up.
These AGMs that are happening at Hartley, are they open, just generally open?
Anyone can attend?
It's and get information or, or, or Yeah.
How does it go?
Emma Hutchison: It's for membership.
We're kind of, again, we've been playing around with the membership a little
bit, but we're now kind of, changing it so that you can, but what if you
Rupert Isaacson: wanted to just come and get information and Okay.
All the, all the lads are together.
Do you have anything that would be open to say it was me and I wanted
to come and I'm not a member, but I wanna find out more about it.
Can I come or how would it work?
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
I think as I.
Website.
There's an awful lot of membership information on that.
And we are starting to put more information on, we're doing things
that they're calling airtime.
So we've got a lady who is running Zooms, and again, it can be for
members, but again, there are other people that you can come in and learn
from these things because again, you don't know whether you wanna sign
up for this to start with or not.
Sure.
Try before you buy almost, don't you?
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
Emma Hutchison: And then at the, the, the one at Har, there's lots of
different speakers from all sorts of different modalities talking about.
So could
Rupert Isaacson: someone buy a ticket, for example, to that HAR
event and just come and listen?
Emma Hutchison: Yes.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: I think we
Rupert Isaacson: need some horse for people to come there.
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: Information will be on that on the website.
Okay.
So that's, I think, as I say, and then the whole thing with qualifications,
again, I would love to have something where, you know, this, somebody's
got this qualification that they're at such and such a level.
Yeah.
But as
Emma Hutchison: you know, there's 1,001 different qualifications out there.
So what this partnership is trying to do is trying to map all the
different qualifications, but at least, you know, you come into
this as a, a counselor or dad who's wanting to, to look for somebody.
You can see where all these qualifications go.
And that one is level, that one that isn't level with that one.
So that's piece in itself is being kind of done at the moment.
Rupert Isaacson: So we should probably get you, info on our program levels
and what those mean in terms of skill sets so that you Yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
Because yeah, for example a horse boy level two in terms of if you've
gone through the evaluation process, not just the certification course.
Yeah.
ERA in Ireland will ensure you if you, if we have gone taken that
person through the evaluation.
'cause we then know their standard of equine care, not just their
standard of training and riding.
But we realize as, for example, horse boy grows, we now have to evolve that
so that w we can go to the next level of, okay, how do we inspect these yards?
Because just 'cause they went through it and did well two years
ago doesn't mean they are where they are now and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And of course a lot of organizations have gone through this in the
past, like the BHS and whatever.
But it's, it's a learning curve for all of us.
And it's, it's true.
I think we have to work together.
Emma Hutchison: But I think that's the big thing to start with.
It's been about getting everybody to buy in to working together because,
you know, 10 years ago people were not prepared to work together.
No.
And now it's really coming together and it's been, it's really positive.
So if we can get that and then we can suddenly start to say,
well, let's start to put some standards that we work towards.
And yeah.
So that's.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, if with your permission, I'll, I'll,
I'll try to get a couple of people down to that on April 8th.
I, myself can't because I'm gonna be in the US but I'm thinking automatically
of Nicole Gillard, who runs our place down in Froom, which is, you know,
relatively like you as an inventor.
And they have the they have medical students coming out from
Bristol University doing their electives and mental health going
to move the Mind, which is, it's, that's the name of the place.
So it's now logical yes.
To add everybody to this network.
And I, it what I want listeners, the reason I'm, I'm going on about this
and asking these questions of Emma, is, is as our field evolves the only
way it's going to really serve the, the number of people it needs to is
if it effectively becomes part of the National Health Service or is if it's in
the USA is funded by just automatically by the big insurance companies.
And I'm sitting here in Germany and that is actually the case, the what's
called the Curatorium for te, which is the, the sort of Health Department
of Therapeutic Writing is, and has been a wing of the government health
department for like three decades.
So they, they, they have really led the charge on this.
But the, the difficulty can be that not.
Every equine assisted need can necessarily be met by every modality.
So the curatorium itself is running into some issues of its own limitations, and
I think that's the same for all of us.
So there might be someone that comes to my program and actually saying,
well, you know, actually that person might be much, much, much better
served by horseback, but a, I need to know about horseback for that.
BI need a relationship with horseback.
We need to be, not be in competition with each other, and we need to really
understand what the other one does so we can make, so that we can come
across as a, as a, as a, as a body of professionals rather than a bunch
of bossy horsey people in fields or looking at each other suspiciously.
Which as you say, 10 years ago, it, it was, despite the very good
work that was being done, have you found that there is, you say, got a
hundred members now on the register.
That's impressive.
How have you managed to get the word out there and people to buy in and
what's, what's the message that you've, and what's the outreach you've done?
Emma Hutchison: I mean, we obviously had quite a rush to start with because
everybody kind of heard about it.
And then it, it, it just, it media.
To give yourself a voice, to be heard, to learn from everybody else.
I mean, that's, you know, I'm a great one for saying,
everybody learns from everybody.
You might learn how you don't wanna do something, but you learn how
you do wanna do something else.
I was course last week and, you know, you just, just learn from everybody.
It's, it's so, this is a, it's a huge opportunity.
Don't be so stubborn and think, oh no, I'm doing fine.
I'm, I'm absolutely, you know,
not
Emma Hutchison: doing, yes, you might be doing a fantastic job, but you
can do an even better job by learning from somebody else that might want
to do photography or something.
Rupert Isaacson: No, exactly.
Exactly, exactly, exactly that and, and, and your whole mentorship system.
It's, it's, it's, it's brilliant and it's original.
You think it's like the way you were talking about it.
Oh yeah.
And we do this and we do, and we have these, you know, this team down south who
come up and these, but it's actually a bit mind blowing if you are listening to this
from where I'm sitting, because you just answered in one sentence the dilemma of
just the, that gap between manpower and funding that almost every organization
hits as it becomes a bit successful.
So the other
Emma Hutchison: thing, just, just on that, the funding thing.
So again, what we've done is we've had to move away from your
standard stuff, and we've been working with our local council a.
And in Scotland we have a, like an employability spectrum, which
is one, one being you don't have a job, five being that you have a
job and everything else in between.
And I managed to convince the head of the employability department
that we could provide a service to people who were pre one and one.
So basically somebody who is not able to leave the house or their wellbeing is so
bad that they're just so anxious about, they can't even think about getting a job.
They're not gonna get to five.
It doesn't matter who you invite them to go and see.
So let us spend some time with them, we can work on them.
And then we work on them pre one, we do one and two.
And then at that stage, they're ready to engage with other people, social workers,
whoever it's employability organizations or other members of the employability team
who can then say, right now let's think about what you might want to do as a job.
Because now you're confident enough, you're able to interact with other people.
You're getting up regularly, you've got some sort of routine.
We can help put all these things in place.
And that has opened up funding to us from a council point of view,
which we didn't have previous.
And that has worked with both the youth development program and with it's
enabled us to start a community program.
So it's basically a week long program where we work with horses,
do all the other activities.
And then the thing is we, we working with the Ukrainian refugees.
As well.
So that's a new thing that we're gonna be starting.
And it's a blended program, so there will be some online stuff.
And again, you think you can't do this work online, you can random, but we
learned that through Covid we weren't able to deliver our programs here
'cause we couldn't have anybody here.
So we, we put together some videos and we talked and we did some zooms with a video
of the horse and we were able to do that.
And that enables you, yes, ultimately you always want people to be able to come and
interact with the horses, but sometimes cost distance numbers exclude that.
So if you can put together this kind of stuff then you can feed it to people.
They can make all these changes.
They might not make as much of a change as if they're actually here
and then they can maybe come here for a day to put all that into practice.
So that's what we're doing with some of these, the Ukrainian community,
because again, we've got do some work to convince them that they wanna actually
be involved in these programs to start.
So we're just about to take on a Ukrainian social worker who will, will
become part of our team and is funded through this, this employability program.
Rupert Isaacson: And is that social worker sitting in Ukraine and will come
in by Zoom or Is is here in the uk.
Emma Hutchison: He's an immigrant himself.
That's, that's come over here and he's actually been working with
the council for the last few years.
And they've allowed him to join our team.
Rupert Isaacson: Now when you say you, you approach the council.
Okay.
And the council's got these Ukrainian refugees, or the council's got these
people who can't get out of bed and, you know, they're pre one or one.
Not everyone knows how to approach a council.
Emma.
How do you do that?
Emma Hutchison: It's just about relationships.
I mean, you have to basically do Italy, find out who people are in councils.
There are so many different departments,
Rupert Isaacson: but people also get elected and, and come and go.
So, I mean, let's say you're trying to build something over two to four years.
You might be dealing with this one person is, is sympathetic
and then someone else comes in.
And so how do you navigate, you know, a a how do you, a, how do you lo
find, get that relationship going?
Like a lot of people are just shy.
What door do you even knock on?
How do you do it?
Do you send someone an email?
How does it begin?
And then how do you navigate?
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
We started by, by contacting our local counselors, and you're right, they do
change on a regular basis and you've got your different, you know, your
different parties, get them all out, invite them all out, get them to come
and see the work that you're doing.
I mean, as I say, we really, do you find
Rupert Isaacson: they generally will, are they usually pretty
Emma Hutchison: They absolutely will try a local productive, we've had local MSPs,
we've had our mps, we've had also, so,
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
So, so in find out who they are and invite them.
Emma Hutchison: Yep.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Emma Hutchison: People don't understand this type of work until they see it.
We are very lucky.
We have got Jock who is an amazing kind of sales front person to
do the real and he loves it.
You know, standing up in front of and giving demonstrations is not
everybody's back, but he loves it.
So we're very lucky that we do have that.
And
Emma Hutchison: then again, the employability team, the, I got to
know through inviting out the head of the employability team, he had
no money for probably eight years.
And then one day I phoned him and he said, you're not gonna believe this.
The government have just granted us some additional employment
funding through this new scheme.
So yes, put a grant in and we'll work together and we'll come up with a plan.
And that's basically what we've done.
And through that we have managed to got
Rupert Isaacson: it to
Emma Hutchison: get all this.
But I mean, it's just, it's just,
Rupert Isaacson: but without that relationship, he would never
have called you to say that?
Emma Hutchison: No, it's, I mean, it's still, it's not
an a well known enough thing.
People certainly up here, people are not going, oh, that send somebody
to EQU assist, they'll sort it out.
Not, not in a million years.
You have gotta fight your corner.
So you've gotta get it's numbers, you've gotta contact loads of people,
you've gotta constantly follow it up, invite people out, send them brochures.
I mean, it's just general kind of sales, isn't it really?
Which when you're delivering at the same time is really difficult to do.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, exactly.
And looking after your horses and, and you know, I, I think by their very nature,
you know, a a lot of us that get into this work are, are fairly maverick and not.
Great lovers of bureaucracy and authoritative systems, but there
comes to be a, there comes a point where if we dunno how to
access them, we can't survive.
And again, I, I think there's just a real need for you to give
this sort of mentorship to people.
You know, if you've got someone who's standing in a field in Staffordshire doing
an amazing job, but no one knows who, who that person is, are they gonna be
there in five years able to do it still without knowing that you can find out.
And how would you even know to what department to look up?
Emma Hutchison: I know because it's not this, again, with us it's different.
Aberdeen City is different to Aberdeen Shire,
right?
Emma Hutchison: It's just literally it.
You just have to keep on and keep asking and keep inviting and just I mean things
like, I mean, we are a charity so we can get, go to trust and grants, but again,
you need to build that relationship.
You are going to get regular funding from those funders who understand, appreciate,
and have a relationship with you.
So it's just the relationship building for an organization like
ours is really, really important.
And that's what's allowed us to keep on and grow and diversify.
And again, you have to think out the box just because you're working
with kids and that's what you love.
Funding school children for us is virtually impossible because
everybody up here says that the kids should be in school and it's funded
by the government and the school.
Well, it doesn't happen like that.
We all know that.
But the lottery and people like that, they won't fund kids during school
hours that fund it outside school hours.
But our courses run during school hours.
So it's just, and I mean, I'm quite happy because I say we, I've gone
down all sorts of different paths and we've diversified and we've changed
this, and we've adapted that because you have to or you won't survive.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, I do think people should be in contact with you.
So can, and here's another question.
If people want mentorship in how to grow and develop their
organizations like that, do you offer trainings and courses in that?
Or is it more informal?
Can, but can people actually hire you as a consultant for this kind of thing?
Because the, the, the kind of information that you're giving Emma,
it's, it's very needed and there's a bit of a paucity of people out there
who really can help people navigate.
So can they contact you and Yeah,
Emma Hutchison: absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: So, so give us all the contacts.
Emma Hutchison: So our website is www horseback org uk
Rupert Isaacson: horseback org uk.
Emma Hutchison: Yep.
My email is.
horseback.org
uk.
Rupert Isaacson: Perfect.
Emma Hutchison: You can follow us on Facebook again, just horseback
uk and we are on Instagram, we're on TikTok, believe it or not.
So all of the socials, we're on all those.
We do try and keep those up to date so that you one of the stories of what's
going on and everything, because again, the funders like to see what's going on.
They like to see.
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
It's all about story.
Yeah.
Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
Absolutely.
We'd love to hear from anybody.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, Emma, it's brilliant.
I, I, I know you've got to go and get on with your evening.
I hope that we can reconvene.
I'd like to have you back on.
I can think of more questions and I know people have more questions
for you and and for Jay also, it might be nice to get Jock mm-hmm.
And TAF on.
Yeah.
Because there's just such a wealth of info.
So, maybe we can agree that this is the first of two or three
rather than just a one-off.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Because people will have, people will have questions.
So horseback do org.uk
and emma@horseback.org.uk.
All right.
Alright.
Well, until the next time, thank you so much for sharing everything you've shared.
It's been.
Educational, not just interesting, like I've learned like, well,
I'm thinking, oh, I've gotta get a photography thing really good.
Alright.
Till the next time.
Emma Hutchison: Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
If you like what we're doing here, please do like, subscribe, tell a friend.
It so helps us to get this valuable work done and the message of
Equine Assisted Stuff out there.
And if you're interested in more conversations, you might want to check
out I'll live free ride free podcast.
And if you'd like to support the podcasts, please go to rupertisakson.
com and click on the Patreon link.
If you're a professional in the equine assisted field or considering a career
in the equine assisted field, you might want to check out our three
certification programs, horseboy method, movement method, and taquin.
Equine integration.
You can find all of those over on new Trails learning.com.
And finally, if you want to check out our cool rock and roll themed
merch back on rupert isaacson.com,
please click on Shop.
You'll find all kinds of fun goodies there.
And if you're looking for a way to spend time until the next podcast, you might
want to consider reading the books that kicked all this off The Horse Boy, the
Long Ride Home and The Healing Land.
So see you next time on Equine Assistant.
world.
Join us for the adventure.